Is Spain Different?

The 1960s tourism campaign that declared Spain different has since become a question historians cannot escape. Scholars have spent decades trying to argue that Spain was in fact ordinary, yet its civil wars, feeble liberal tradition and long Franco regime are still read as signs of an exceptional path.

Few studies have set Spain's last two hundred years beside those of other European countries. Townson takes up liberalism, nationalism, the role of anticlericalism, the Second Republic, the Franco years and the move to democracy, testing each against comparative evidence.

Written for students of Spanish and European history, the book also speaks to present-day arguments about where Spain stands in the wider world.